reflection

In preparation for a time of reflection on the year I am ending, I asked a number of the women whose thoughts, prayers, poems and silences have shaped me this year for questions:

In the last year, how have I been touched? How have I touched others (physically, emotionally and spiritually)?

Despite the moves and upheaval, what does it mean to live a home made life? Not in the briefest sense of the briefest pass of the term, but if you parse out "home" and "made", what does that really mean? How could that feed into a more peaceful and simple living?

What has given me life? How have I given it? What would it mean to live and love freely?

How did you perceive power as a child? What ideas, self-representations, objects, stories and people held power and meaning for you as a child? How did these ideas change and shift as your fire or power was tampered with?

What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself in the past year?...in a more self-critical vein, I like sometimes to think of what CS Lewis calls the "disordered loves" - how does what I crave or desire mask my transcendent desire for God?

What has been the time you felt most alive in the city? Series of moments? What is one city landscape that has really connected with your spiritual state of being?

What a gift.